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THE 



Recognition of the Supernatural 



IN 



letters and in life 



AN ORATION 




// 



BY 



RICHARD S* STORRS, D.D.,LL.D 



/ 






| JUN 9 1881 i 



NEW YORK 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY 

900 BROADWAY, COR. 20th ST 



IT 



fifths 

%1 



COPYRIGHT, 1 88 1, BY 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY. 



Edward O. Jenkins, 

Printer and Stereotyrer, 

20 North William Street. New York. 



NOTE. 

The following Oration was delivered at Cam- 
bridge, Mass., before the Phi Beta Kappa Society 
in Harvard University, at the Annual Meeting of 
that Society, July I, 1880. 

It was subsequently delivered, in substance, i7i New 
York, at the request of the Association for the 
Advancement of Science and Art, at the Meeting of 
the Association, April n, 1881. 

// is now printed, at the request of some of those 
who heard it, on one or other of these occasions. In 
a few instances, passages referred to in the text have 
been printed in foot-notes, for the convenience of any 
wishing to turn to them. 



ORATION 



Mr. President : Gentlemen of the Society : 

It is a brilliant and prophetic enthusiasm of our 
times which finds its incentive in the advancing mas- 
tery of man over external nature. To an extent not 
always equalled in political, military, or religious en- 
thusiasms, it justifies itself by what man has positively 
achieved, in his long wrestle with the vast and ener- 
getic physical system in which he is placed. He 
knows more of it : through the widened range of 
geographical exploration, through the broader scope 
and the finer exactness of scientific inquiry, through 
the occasional surprising insight of poetical genius, 
seizing the secret rhythm of its laws, and anticipating 
the more gradual discoveries of research. He uses it, 
accordingly, with clearer intelligence, a more assured 
and fruitful freedom. 

The impulse to govern has certainly had no fairer 
field, or nobler exhibition, than it has with the mod- 
ern student of nature. Not content with climbing 
the lucent steeps, by lens and analysis, that he may 
follow the stars in their courses, may measure their 
masses, prefigure their motion, and even detect their 
forming elements, or with making the rocks give up 



6 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

their fossils, unroll their records of fire-mist and of 
glacier, and show how they are arched and wedged 
to maintain the continents — not satisfied to explore 
the physical constitution of the animal tribes, though 
hidden miles deep beneath the sea-surface, to interpret 
the physiology and chemistry of plants, or to search for 
the secret origin of life, and trace its development in 
the manifold marvels of organization — he commands 
admiration by making the forces, vital or mechanical, 
which his search ascertains, contribute to assist hu- 
man progress, in deft, elastic, unwearied service. His 
successes in this direction give ever-fresh surprise 
to the century : as the vapor which fire smites from 
the water pulls his trains, or pushes his vast iron- 
framed hulls over the sea ; as the magical wire trans- 
mits his thought, without interval of time, to distant 
lands; as sunbeams paint instantaneous pictures, of 
faces, palaces, landscapes, clouds, while hurtless light- 
nings begin already to illuminate his towns ; as veg- 
etables and minerals, whose virtues lately were unsus- 
pected, yield medicines for his sickness, tonics for his 
weakness, balms for his pain. 

Man seems approaching, with no dilatory steps, 
the point where he shall have supremacy, by reason 
of his knowledge, and of the instruments with which 
skill supplies him, over the forces hitherto hidden in 
the great complex of what we call Nature ; when his 
alert and indefatigable will, not aspiring to arrest or 
radically change the vast and subtile cosmical ener- 



Effects of Mans control over Nature. 7 

gies, shall be able to use them with easy and secure 
control. Already, in part — hereafter, it seems prob- 
able, with a completeness only indicated now — he is 
to have at his command, under the beneficent primi- 
tive laws which no ingenuity can amend or avoid, the 
physical powers that play like thought,yet work with an 
energy demiurgic, in the structure of the globe. Then 
the planet shall be subjected to him, whose direct 
muscular hold upon its mass is so insignificant : pre- 
senting its forces for his employment, its wealths for 
his possession, its secrets of beauty for his gladness 
and culture, while it also bears him in silent smooth- 
ness amid the vast aerial spaces. 

It is natural that the advance thus realized, and the 
further advance which seems predicted, should be re- 
garded with an animating pride, and that their effects 
upon civilization should be anticipated with fond ex- 
pectation. 

Already those effects have been manifold and im- 
portant. Not only have we better houses in conse- 
quence, softer clothing, more elaborate furniture and 
more various foods, quicker passage from point to 
point, larger opportunities for making leisure agree- 
able and labor productive. This ampler mastery of 
man over nature tends to the increase of general in- 
telligence, to the liberalizing of governments, and the 
wider establishment of popular freedoms. While it 
gives incessant motive to invention, it encourages as 
well the far ventures of commerce. While it keeps 



8 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

the chemist busy in his laboratory, the mineralogist 
with his hammer, or the civil engineer with his exact 
and immense calculations, it expands the range and 
augments the equipment of institutions of learning. It 
tends as well to brace and exhilarate the spirit of peo- 
ples, making each person, whose life is embraced in 
their composite unity, more conscious of the common 
sovereignty over whatever furthers enterprise. It 
brings nations into neighborhood, and gives growing 
intimacy to their moral and jural relations with each 
other ; thus tending at last to realize the ideal of a 
Race compacted of many peoples, each with its idioms 
of law, custom, art, language, but all united in com- 
mon endeavors and a common aspiration. 

The progress thus in part achieved, and which 
looks for completion, is one in which all must rejoice 
who recognize the relation between an improved out- 
ward civilization and a wider and more practical pop- 
ular training ; who see how arts, industries, freedoms, 
inspire and sustain the public tone of hopefulness 
and of courage. Perhaps nothing else in the brilliant 
history of human endeavor illustrates better the dig- 
nity and the undaunted boldness of the spirit in man, 
than does the fact that he can so explore and domi- 
nate the serviceable system of physical forces amid 
which he stands. It was the signal of unrivalled em- 
pire, in the day of Rome's power, when tribute came 
to the conquering city from peoples of whom the 
generation just passed had not even heard. It sets a 



Fainter Impression of what transcends Nature. 9 

superb crown upon man that so many sciences and 
practical arts, unknown to our childhood, now bring 
to him ensigns and troops, spices and gold. 

But while this is true, it is true also that one effect 
follows, though not perhaps in necessary consequence, 
from this progressive control of man over natural 
forces, whose promises are not of the best. It is seen 
in the feebler impression which he takes of anything 
grand, powerful, even real, above and beyond this 
apparent and sensible frame of things ; in the doubt 
which comes by degrees to possess him whether 
there be any over-world, invisible but transcendent, 
with which he stands in essential relations. Certainly 
the apprehension of such surpassing realms of being, 
inaccessible to man's search, though not eluding the 
reach of his thought, has been more vivid in other 
times than it is at present, among other peoples than 
it is among us. The mass, and the multiform attrac- 
tion, of the physical, now pull the thought from ethe- 
real heights. Men are too busy with the proximate 
provinces of construction and energy to think of any 
outlying realms which railways can not reach, and 
with which telegraphs do not communicate. Present 
phenomena sensibly concern them. Measurable forces 
directly subserve their convenience or their enterprise. 
The practical and controlling regard of society thus 
fastens upon these. The " positive Philosophy " only 
formulates and elaborates a diffused thought, out of 
which it has sprung ; and they are in danger of being 



io Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

regarded as fanciful enthusiasts who seriously affirm 
that the immaterial is more permanent than matter, 
the spiritual more stupendous than all which the visi- 
ble heavens exhibit : that there are, or may be, illim- 
itable spheres of personal power, and of a supreme 
vital experience, whose light has as yet but dimly 
dawned on the most aspiring soul of man, but with 
which each, by the make of his spirit, is essentially 
allied, and in comparison with which the furthest ex- 
pansion, the most commanding or fruitful energy, of 
that which is natural becomes insignificant. 

There have been times when the existence of such 
manifold and imperative systems of life, above the 
present, was an axiom in thought. Undoubtedly there 
are those who hold it now, with as clear a conception, 
with a confidence as profound. But the popular liter- 
ature takes slight account of it, while the general 
mind, in civilized lands, is only more firmly anchored 
to the earth by every drill which cuts the rock, by 
every spade which uncovers the mine, by every fresh 
terrestrial force which is engaged for human use. It 
tends to hold in abeyance, if not to deny, the tremend- 
ous proposition of the existence and presence of a 
governing God. It somewhat doubts if conscious- 
ness be not a mere function of the brain, and if there 
be any personal career awaiting the spirit beyond the 
grave. And it wholly ignores, if it does not even 
scornfully reject, the existence of multitudinous per- 
sons and powers — like the Thrones, Dominations, 



Tendency to overlook the Supernatural. 1 1 

Princedoms, of Milton — beyond the reach of its the- 
orems or tubes. 

We can not fail, I am sure, to recognize the tend- 
ency, whether it has our sympathy or not ; or to see 
that it advances with civilization, and is there most 
energetic and governing where the special knowledges 
marking our time have fullest development. And as 
civilized lands affect others with more and more pow- 
er — making the impression not of their arts or wealths 
alone, but of their prevalent moral life — this tendency 
widens in the world. It seems to bid fair to become 
universal. Then those super-sensible spheres of being 
from which, or from the impression of which, has 
come large influence upon man, will cease to attract 
his forecasting thought. The solid globe, on which 
citios are builded and governments framed, over 
which are flung the myriad lines of railway and wire, 
and the smallest crinkle along whose coasts has been 
measured and mapped, this will be to the race which 
dwells on it the ultimate object of inquiry and regard. 
The advancing control over physical energies will 
satisfy aspiration ; and the strange supernal grace and 
gleam which have at times indisputably shot from 
realms beyond all reach of sense, upon the spirit and 
life of the world, will fail to affect the coming times. 

In some of its obvious and familiar relations it is 
not my office to combat this tendency, or to offer 
critical comments upon it. But it stands connected 
with large departments of thought and experience, 



12 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

in which we all must feel an interest ; and I can not 
but think that it threatens a loss, in certain directions, 
which we shall all desire to avoid. It may be that 
we, as scholarly persons, have duties to perform 
which are relative to it, and whose authority we shall 
concede. 

It is evident at once that the failure to recognize 
any sovereign reality in spheres and systems of spirit- 
ual energy, transcending the nature which science in- 
vestigates, has essential bearing upon religious thought 
and life ; that it sharply antagonizes that scheme of 
Christianity which has for centuries been in the world, 
whose influence has been admitted by most to be 
largely beneficent, and which many of us have been 
wont to regard as the underlying force beneath what 
is best in civilization. Whether or not miracles are 
held to be essentially associated with the substance of 
Christianity, it will scarcely be denied that this claims 
to come from a Being supreme, through those whom 
He had instructed and quickened, and that its prom- 
ises contemplate a life on higher levels, in nobler asso- 
ciations, than we yet know. If, then, there be no 
realms above us, with which we are connected, the 
so-called Evangel becomes a Galilean fancy ; and the 
faith in which many have found hitherto their utmost 
wisdom and inexhaustible solace has disappeared, like 
the cloud of chrysolite and opal dissolved into mist. 
But in this relation it is not my purpose now to con- 
sider this tendency of the time, since the theme might 



Threatened Loss to Civilization. 13 

not wholly suit the occasion. It has relations, however, 
almost as plainly, to the soul of man, in its intrinsic 
force and sensibility, and to some chief forms in which 
that soul expresses its life : to art, letters, government, 
history, to social science, philanthropic endeavor, as 
well as to religion ; and in these connections it is 
clearly our province to seek to anticipate and to meas- 
ure its effects. 

I can not but feel that it threatens a loss to much 
which is of value in civilization ; that the recognition 
of spheres of being above our sense — the positive and 
practical recognition of such, in the minds from which 
others take uplift and impulse — is quite indispensable 
to whatever is noblest in thought and life ; and that 
when this passes, if it shall pass, from the general 
consciousness, an immense force will be deducted 
from the powers which have wrought for man's ad- 
vancement. It may be therefore part of our business, 
not to suppress, but certainly to supplement, the now 
active tendency of thought, by bringing nearer to the 
average mind the things superior, which pass the lim- 
its of what we call Nature. I would offer, with your 
permission, a brief plea for the fresh and controlling 
recognition among us of what is essentially Super- 
natural : which can not be the object of present dem- 
onstration, yet whose reality is suggested by many 
facts, and the glory of which man may in a meas- 
ure prophetically feel, though only its vague out- 
lines can he see. I would do this, not so much in the 



14 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

interest of religion, as of letters, philosophy, the fair 
humanities, the political and social elevation of man. 
Unless I am wholly mistaken in my judgment, there 
is a duty here for us. 

It is at once to be observed how native to the 
mind appears to be the imbedded impression of some- 
thing transcending the reach of Nature, as we under- 
stand that ; of realms of existence, surpassing sight, 
yet of substantive verity, and to whose abounding in- 
tenser life the highest which we know on the earth is 
partial and rude. So evident is this, that we are pre- 
pared to expect beforehand the part which this im- 
pression must have played in thought and history ; 
how much must have been distinctly derived from it 
in the spirit and the work of illustrious persons or of 
eminent peoples. And we ought clearly to recognize 
this, even if we are henceforth to feel that nothing is 
real but the rich little planet on which we dwell, with 
the groups of stars to which it is bound. 

Max Miiller seems to state the fact with only tem- 
perate force in his " Science of Religion," when he 
says : " There will be and can be no rest till we admit, 
what can not be denied, that there is in man a third 
faculty " — apart, that is, from the faculty of sense, or 
of reason — "which I call simply," he adds, "the fac- 
ulty of apprehending the Infinite, not only in re- 
ligion, but in all things ; a power independent of 
sense and reason, a power in a certain sense contra- 
dicted by sense and reason ; but yet, I suppose, a very 



Tnstinctive Recognition of things above Nature, 15 

real power, if we see how it has held its own from 
the beginning of the world— how neither sense nor 
reason have been able to overcome it, while it alone 
is able to overcome both reason and sense." * Or, as 
Mr. Lecky has expressed the thought in his History 
of European Morals : " Mysticism, transcendentalism, 
inspiration and grace, are all words expressing the 
deep-seated belief that we possess fountains of 
knowledge apart from all the acquisitions of the 
senses ; that there are certain states of mind, certain 
flashes of moral and intellectual illumination, which 
can not be accounted for by any play or combination 
of our ordinary faculties. "f He finds in harmony 
with this the Neo-Platonist principle, that, in di- 
vine things, the task of man is not to create or to 
acquire, but to educe ; that the means of his perfec- 
tion are not dialectics or research, but meditation and 
silence, with whatever may over-awe and elevate the 
mind, and quicken the realization of the Divine Pres- 
ence. 

Such a deep and quick sense of the realness and 
supremacy of things above the visible forms and phys- 
ical forces with which we are invested — such an ap- 
prehension of reciprocal relations between the life 
which we have on earth and the transcending life on 
high, and of the possibility of the mind's attaining 
strange consciousness of that in its occasional super- 



* Lectures on the Science of Religion, p. 14. 
t Vol. I., p. 348. 



1 6 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

lative states — this seems to be as instinctive with 
man, I had almost said, as the sense of personality. 
It is not the late fruit of an over-stimulated civiliza- 
tion. On the other hand, it lies nearest man's primi- 
tive experience, and marks most distinctly his earlier 
development. Concerning this, at least, it is true that 
' trailing clouds of glory ' doth he come. All ethnic 
religions involve this fundamental idea, the rudest as 
well as the most elaborate ; and the fetish of the bar- 
barian, the fantastic idol of the Indian temple — with 
its eyes of glittering stones, and its grotesque com- 
binations of abnormal images of fierceness and 
strength — these, as well as stately temples, Egyptian 
or Hellenic, illustrate the activity, and the general 
distribution, of that instinct in man which affirms the 
primacy over all that is visible of what eye hath not 
seen, nor the human spirit wholly conceived. 

The religions of the world have not been sug- 
gested, however they have been used, by craft and 
ambition. They have sprung from instinctive aspira- 
tions in the soul, reaching toward persons and realms 
supernatural, as surely as geysers, flinging their strange 
and steaming columns through icy airs, have taken 
their impulse from profound and energetic subter- 
ranean forces. If anything, therefore, seems native 
to man, it is this tendency to affirm the invisible, and 
to reach in desire toward systems of being surpassing 
ours. As the frame of the bird prepares it for flight, 
and foreshows that as its function and joy — as the 



True Philosophy of the Mind. ij 

automatic impulse of the fish propels it as by a phys- 
ical force through the paths of the seas — so the inti- 
mate and continuing constitution of the soul appears 
to ordain man to accept and reach after what passes 
the limits of sense and time. If the instinct, so gen- 
eral, is not a real one, or if there is nothing in the 
facts of the Universe which furnishes foundation and 
argument for it, it is hard to infer anything with con- 
fidence from such a deceptive mental constitution. 

It is obvious, too, that what even barbarism thus 
suggests, a careful and searching psychological analy- 
sis affirmatively repeats. The philosophy of the mind is 
certainly not an attenuated counterpart of the physiol- 
ogy of organization. The moment we recognize human 
personality, we front a marvel which sets man apart, 
in essential distinction, from the physical system in 
which he is enveloped ; which makes the spirit more 
than balance any masses or mechanics of matter; 
which locates its imperial origin in the purple cham- 
bers of a Divine purpose ; and which almost predicts 
for it a destiny august, as it certainly allies it with 
whatever powers or spheres may be ultimate. 

So, in all its higher activity, the spirit affirms its in- 
dependence of occasions, its intimate relations with 
what is sovereign and primordial. It is not only that 
in ecstasy or in agony it transcends situations, finds no 
complete image of its intense life in anything physi- 
cal, and in its bright or awful solitude is conscious 
only of timeless relations, and of being affined to 



1 8 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

imperial spirits. There are spontaneous intuitions of 
reason, there are imperative moral affirmations, 
which can not be confused with careful conclusions of 
the practical understanding, which discern the reality 
of things unseen, and declare them immutable. We 
have to affirm the authority of that intellectual vision 
which seizes the absolute, the unconditioned — we 
have to admit that the moral nature, with its supreme 
sense of a moral order radiant and regnant without 
limit of time, is somehow related to a system above 
— even though we do not concede to the mystic that 
there are transient unspeakable states in which the 
spirit communes directly with unchangeable essences, 
and is in fellowship with minds and a life above the 
earth. Philosophy must say, as well as religion, that 
the highest light comes from above. Only the uni- 
versal interprets the individual. Each balanced dew- 
drop implies the suns. Each simplest fact has its 
basis in a principle valid for all the constellations ; 
and each human mind must rest on a mind sympa- 
thetic, creative, and eternally young. Pantheism it- 
self, which destructively absorbs the mind into God, 
yet attributes to it this transcendent origin. And, on 
the other hand, how vehemently soever the soul may 
assert its separate sovereignty, when reason and con- 
science are purely illumined they carry in themselves 
a spiritual certitude of something in the universe im- 
mutable and unspeakable, yet related to us — a cer- 
titude as majestic as any moving column of cloud, 



Relation of the Soul to the Infinite, 19 

though its fleecy folds should be inlaid with heavenly 
fire.* 

It is not, therefore, needful to make mysticism our 
Gospel to affirm the organic relation of the soul, by 
its deep and delicate and unsearchable constitution, 
with infinite realms of law and life. The energies 
and the splendors combined in such may well surpass 
our utmost thought, while the realness of their exist- 
ence may be as apparent to the sensitive spirit, on its 
supreme heights, as is the hardness or the color of 
objects of sense. 

Indeed, I do not see why any philosophy should 
deny this, even the most aggressively agnostic. It 
may hold it in abeyance, but why should it deny? 
Though one should believe that in primal atoms in 
here ' the promise and potency ' of mind — that there 
has been, even, spontaneous evolution of nothing into 
force, that the only efficient causes are mechanical, 
and that living things are directly derived, by natural 
means, without break of continuity, from lifeless mat- 



* " This Universal, which is the idea, he [Plato] conceives as sep- 
arate from the world of phenomena, as absolutely existing Substance. 
It is the heavenly sphere, in which alone lies the field of truth, in which 
the gods and pure souls behold colorless, shapeless, incorporeal Exist- 
ence ; the justice, temperance, and science that are exalted above all 
Becoming, and exist not in another, but in their own pure essence. The 
true Beauty is in no living creature in earth or heaven or anywhere else, 
but remains in its purity everlastingly, for itself and by itself, in one form, 
unmoved by the changes of that which participates in it. The Essence 
of things exists absolutely for itself, one in kind, and subject to no vicis- 
situde." — Zeller : "Plato und die (liter e Akademie ;" Trans, of S. F. 
Alleyne and A. Goodwin, pp. 240-1. 



20 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

ter — he must admit that somehow or other it has come 
to pass that a cosmos is here : which is not a conge- 
ries of unassociated facts ; in which is constant pro- 
gress upward, from the oldest Laurentian protozoan to 
the brain of a Humboldt or a Goethe ; in which the 
eye of the gnat, and the shimmering outstretch of the 
ocean, equally indicate methodical force ; and to 
which, so far as we can discern, no limit is assignable, 
in space or in time. Why then is it not probable, 
even thus, that outside what we know of existence — 
beyond the earth, which we measure by tons, and 
whose pathway in space we reckon by leagues — may 
be outlying grander systems, in which forces have 
come to a finer consummation, yet with which our 
system stands in relation ? 

It can be only a hypothesis, perhaps, on such basis 
of reasoning. I see not why it should not be such, 
and one with a practical effect on the mind. The 
supernatural of the savage is brought within the har- 
monies of law, as science advances. What seems 
to us to wholly surpass or contrast nature, as we know 
that, may be moving in like manner to yet higher 
melodies of plan and rule, if the Universe be as ex- 
tended and various as it appears. Our ignorance, cer- 
tainly, affords no warrant for a contrary judgment; 
and no man who has not traversed the immensities 
can fairly deny those majestic and manifold realms of 
life toward which the spirit, in the restlessness of an 
expectant prevision, natively aspires. 



The Heavens prophetic of Higher Existence. 2 1 

In fact, it is the conception of these which makes 
the harmonious orbs of the heavens, as every night 
declares them to us, alluring to thought. The physi- 
cal combinations of the heavens are stupendous. But 
what really matters it, to the contemplating mind, 
whether there be one world, or twenty, or twenty 
millions, if in their relation to life they are the mere 
equivalents of ours ? or if they are so dissevered from 
us that we can look for no association with what in 
their life is more subtile and regal ? We aim to rise, 
always from the lower to the higher ; from science to 
art ; from history to philosophy ; from the study of 
books to sympathetic conference with masterful 
minds ; from culture to character, and a nobler expe- 
rience. The soul craves, and in prophetic moments 
it expects, in like manner to rise from lower levels, 
now familiar, to further and grander ranges of activ- 
ity, and to contact with nobler forms of life. It wants 
the final ' vision Divine,' for which faculty has been 
given it ; and immortality would lose its attraction if 
the courageous and eager spirit were there forever 
to be treading the round of preceding discoveries, 
and making acquisitions only counterparts of its pres- 
ent. 

Ascension toward the unreached — an ultimate com- 
panionship with what at present transcends observa- 
tion, and overtops thought — is man's instinctive im- 
pulse and hope. Whatever denies that, or lures or 
drives from it the thought of the world, will lower 



22 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

the heights of human aspiration, and throw discredit 
on a spiritual instinct than which none nobler has 
been shown. 

It will do more than this, as I have suggested. For 
this impulse which reaches toward realms of life above 
the present has not been a feeble or transient force, 
only sufficient to stir vague desire, or to animate fancy. 
It has been one of the most energetic of all the forces 
affecting our mysterious life ; and the large incite- 
ment of which it has been the vital and perennial 
source is conspicuous in history. 

If it has not disciplined the practical understand- 
ing, as have studies in science, or metaphysical analy- 
sis, it has certainly given such scope and stimulation 
as nothing else could to the royal force of the Imagi- 
nation — that faculty which seems most nearly akin to 
higher forms and powers of existence, and from 
which falls transfiguring lustre on all subordinate 
mental activity. Whatever exalts and invigorates this, 
and opens to it appropriate range, has to do with the 
noblest intellectual development ; and it is always 
the unattained, believed to exist, yet inaccessible to 
present research, which most allures and animates 
this. What lies beyond the snowy or verdurous cir- 
cle of the hills, within which one's narrow life is passed 
— what lay beyond the mysterious seas, with their 
monotone of murmured monition or complaint, be- 
fore the daring keels of commerce had challenged and 
crossed them — what lies amid or above the stars, now 



Imagination exalted, by the Supernatural. 23 

that man has measured and weighed the earth, and 
hung it in its lowly place amid the constellations — 
that it is, surpassing discovery, eluding equally re-agent 
and spectroscope, of which no ephemeris can be com- 
puted, which stirs this commanding faculty in the 
mind. It is not satisfied with recalling the past, or 
invoking the dim and distant figures which tower on 
future earthly fields. It seeks to seize the shapes of 
power, the intensities of experience, yet unapproached, 
and to people with them ethereal realms. If such an 
outreach be denied, its finest and highest incitement 
fails, and discouragement and debility must take the 
place of exuberant impulse in this loveliest and lord- 
liest faculty of the mind. 

Indeed, all the intellectual powers must share, in 
their measure, in such depression, or such stimulation. 
For the mind is not a bundle of faculties, loosely asso- 
ciated, but a vital and energetic unity, wherein each 
force has its completeness in the sympathy of others, 
and shares in their augmented power. The sense of 
native nobleness in the soul is essential to the perfect 
energy of each faculty ; and that sense of nobleness is 
inevitably exalted by the conception of relations to 
what transcends the definite and imperious systenr 
of nature. Whatever carries us far from ourselves 
tends to broaden and exalt intellectual power. The 
mind which surveys, with a true apprehension, great 
periods in history, is invigorated and widened, as well 
as instructed, by that splendid exercise. Its very con- 



24 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

sciousness seems to expand, its intimate energy to be 
reinforced, as it matches itself, in sympathetic reflec- 
tion, with noble persons and surpassing careers. So 
the student contemplating with interpreting insight 
remote problems of philosophy, is more aware of the 
fineness and greatness of his power, for every sure and 
victorious hold which is realized by him on the prin- 
ciples there involved ; and it is a majestic office of 
science — ranging in its view from the infinitely little 
to the indefinitely great, and infolding the creation in 
its reconciling thought — to stimulate and enhance in- 
tellectual faculty, by making it master, in thought at 
least, over force and law, as well as phenomena. 

But most of all do we become sensible of the royal 
place which belongs to the spirit, most sure and effi- 
cient becomes the impulse thus imparted to the mind, 
when we rise in thought to what in essence surpasses 
the utmost elevation and range of physical nature, yet 
with which we are in vital alliance. The cottage or 
the college over-arched by the vast and shining star- 
domes, may sink to nothing in the comparison, as be- 
ing in fact less when so measured than the speck of 
dust floating amid uncalculated azures. But the spirit, 
if there be one, in cottage or in college, which can 
pass beyond the luminous worlds or the unresolved 
nebulae, and feel itself akin to whatever personal 
powers are on them, and to whatever tragedy or 
triumph they witness, that will be only sublimed by 
the action. In such a supreme apocalypse of 



Intensity of Life, from the Supernatural. 25 

thought it will find inspirations which were else 
inconceivable. 

The long, mechanic pacings to and fro, 
The set gray life, and apathetic end, 

will not be for it. Intensity of life will then be real- 
ized, in which each force is at its best : as marvels of 
discourse sometimes amaze us, poetic images flash 
upon us, from minds before on the common level, 
when they are passing — as they feel at least — through 
the shadows of death into the expanses of unimagin- 
able light. The humblest mind, thus related in its 
consciousness to unattained splendors of life, becomes 
august in the sublimity of its thought. 

An influence so surpassing, as it enters into life, af- 
fects of necessity every faculty. The constructive 
understanding takes alertness and enterprise, and is 
set upon larger and more fruitful activity. The fancy 
works with gladder grace. Even humor is gayer, and 
wit becomes more tenderly bright. The reason rises 
to clearer vision, and is enthroned in serener com- 
mand. That consummate point in experience is 
reached where the child-nature inseparably infuses 
matured power, in which appears the element of gen- 
ius. The consciousness of proximity to a life in the 
universe vaster than ours, whose circles involve but 
sweep beyond us, melodious, ethereal, and without 
limitation — whoever has this, has in him the boy still 
father of the man. He, 

— by the vision splendid, 
Is on his way attended ; 



26 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

and the light in which the earth is apparelled fades 
not for him into the common light of day. In ex- 
hilarating freedom he walks thenceforth upon the 
high places. Expectation and success are the heri- 
tage of his mind. The scholar investigates with 
more discursive and rewarding inquisition. The in- 
ventor's thought plays more freely amid the occult 
combinations of force. Jurist and journalist, chem- 
ist and geologist, artist and explorer, each must re- 
spond to the stimulating power from that appre- 
hended over-world ; while, in the spirits most sensi- 
tive and profound, ineffable forces are brought into 
action. Then come to such majestic silences ; the 
sabbaths of contemplation ; the visioned hours of the 
spirit on its Patmos ; when it no more is fretted with 
monotonous trifles, or wasted of its superlative life in 
the ceaseless tumult of visible things ; when it sees it- 
self connected with immensities and eternities, and is 
inwardly conscious of immortal vitality. Out of such 
moods comes what is noblest in thought ; and the se- 
cret force which lifts men to them drops always from 
higher spheres, only seen as yet in far fore-gleam. 
When these cease to be recognized by man, the mind 
will miss the grandest force which yet has reached it.* 

* " Thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself, and none 
of these things trouble her — neither sounds, nor sights, nor pain, nor any 
pleasure ; when she has as little as possible to do with the body, and 

has no bodily sense or feeling, but is aspiring after being In this 

present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to knowledge 
when we have the least possible concern or interest in the body, and are 
not saturated with the bodily nature, but remain pure until the hour 



Effect of the Supernatural on Character. 27 

Nor may we omit to notice, also, the inspiration 
which comes from the same high source to whatever 
is stateliest, loveliest, sovereign, in the domain of 
character. 

I do not refer, of course, to any special graces or 
forces ascribed to special forms of religion, but to 
the general moral effect of the clear recognition of 
spheres supernal upon the personal spirit in man. 
Tranquillity is born of it. So are gentleness, grav- 
ity, and a grand aspiration. It is the condition of 
those august hopes which are essentially helpful to 
virtue. Chivalric disregard of danger and pain is as 
natural to it as the lift of the waves when the moon 
hangs above them. Out of it has streamed an invin- 
cible courage into the will, in the time of imminent 
earthly peril. From it have sprung the irresistible en- 
thusiasms, which have matched and mastered the feroci- 
ties of power. It has been the stimulant to heroic con- 
secration, which no resistance could daunt or break, 
any more than grape-shot can shatter the sunshine. 

Martyrdom certainly affords no proof of any doc- 
trine, only of the martyr's confidence in it. Mission- 
ary or monastic devotion may illustrate nothing be- 
yond the height to which the human will can rise in 
its disdain of ordinary motives. But mission and 
martyrdom are at least grand facts in exhibition of 

when God is pleased to release us. Then the foolishness of the body 
will be cleared away, and we shall be pure, and hold converse with other 
pure souls, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere ; and this 
is surely the light of truth." Socrates, in the Phaedo, 65, 66. 



28 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

character; and no one can question that they are 
most familiar where the sense of vital powers and 
realms above the present is vivid and practical. Let 
Nature, as we see it, become to a man all that there is, 
pinning thought to the earth, and narrowing experi- 
ence within sharp time-limits, and the will may still 
be stubbornly set to accomplish a purpose ; but the 
joy in labor unrequited, the victory in lonely suffer- 
ing, the eager self-sacrifice for the unseen — these will 
pass, with the ardor of a devotion no longer legiti- 
mate, and the splendor and solace of a lost expectation. 
All really superb and delightful character must find, 
as it has found, motive and help in such apprehension 
of things transcendent. Coulanges has shown how 
rooted in the antique state was the thought of the 
Family, as vitally related to spheres beyond, with 
worship due from it to the spirits of those from whom 
its transmitted life had come. This was, in fact, the 
conservative force in the ancient society. So the 
Family among us has sacredness upon it, because 
standing in immortal relations, having its basis in a 
Divine plan, and making its sweet domestic loves the 
microcosm of all charity and worship. The Church,too, 
exists — according to its ideal, at least — with its vital 
fellowships in sacrament and service, to cherish what- 
ever is chiefest in character, because of its fundamen- 
tal premise of a life waiting beyond the present ; and 
no society for grand and illustrious ethical culture can 
permanently continue on a slighter foundation. 



Impulse to nobler Moral Attainment. 29 

The general estimate of spiritual values must be 
highest, the ideal of them most complete, where the 
Universe appears an open field for human experience, 
beginning now, to continue through unreckoned cy- 
cles. If there be other beings than man, and sub- 
limer domains of life than those which we see, it may 
well be that all the powers which we possess shall 
seem insignificant when brought to comparison with 
those beyond ; that our small knowledges shall there 
disappear, as tinted clouds, absorbed amid surpassing 
lights. But whatever of pure and high character is in 
us must still be worthy of affection and homage. The 
morally great is equally great on whatever parallel, or 
if on planes above them all. Spaces are nothing, cir- 
cumstances nothing, to the loving, intrepid, magnani- 
mous spirit. Wherever in the Universe are light and 
beauty, duty and grace, there must be the home of 
the soul which with them is in final accord. 

Here, therefore, is the inexhaustible impulse to an 
intrinsic and beautiful nobleness. It is not from 
laws, teachings, examples, the maxims of prudence, 
or the dictates of conscience — it is from this immense 
conception of the timeless relations of the spirit in 
man, and of its possible coming association with per- 
sons and spheres surpassing thought, that the subtlest 
and strongest incentive comes to what is august and 
surpassing in virtue. If one had the chance to write a 
poem for spirits to read in higher realms — to mould 
the marble into lovely forms of ecstasy and passion 



30 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

for them to contemplate — to paint the picture whose 
beauty should show no pallid tint or tremulous line 
beneath the searching heavenly lustres — with what 
infinite pains would he strive at his work ! That he 
can make his character worthy the free acceptance of 
those whose feet, sandalled with light, have trodden 
only ethereal paths, it is the grandest benefit of grace 
which God, if there be a God, has bestowed. It is 
assuredly the consummate expression of the power of 
protoplasm, if that it be which has built the creation ! 
And when the thought of such a result rises within 
one, the supreme law of character which dominates 
the world from Galilee and from Calvary needs no 
word to interpret, and no argument to defend it. 

This has been shown, in examples uncounted. Be- 
cause an Infinite Life has been recognized, supreme in 
character as in power — with illustrious spirits, wise, 
effulgent, and immortal in beauty — men have sought 
with an ardor beyond that of scholar, soldier, miner, 
for the whiteness of purity, and the moral glory of self- 
consecration. That virtues have appeared among 
those to whom all this was a dream, is of course also 
true. But the contrast offered by their examples, al- 
ways pathetic, is often tragic. Their very ideal has 
wanted firm outline, and luminous supremacy over 
the soul. Celestial attractions have imparted no up- 
lift to the hard-set and strenuous will. Without ar- 
dor of spirit, or the glad exhilaration of anticipating 
minds, they have toiled to satisfy moral judgment. 



Great Influence upon Civilization. 31 

There is little to animate, though much to admonish, 
in their impatient and sad endeavors ; and nothing is 
more sure than that if the conception be displaced 
from the general mind of lucid and unwasting spheres 
with which our life is interlinked, the most vigorous 
incentive to a superlative virtue will fail from society, 
as the waters recede from bay or bar when the swing 
of the sea is no longer behind them. 

Because such profound instincts in the soul, and 
such energetic forces, are addressed by the impression 
of what vastly outreaches the tangible and temporal 
system around us, it can not surprise us that great in- 
fluence should have come from it into civilization : 
so that to remove what it has imparted to human 
achievement would be to impoverish the record of 
the race. Not only have schemes of Religion been 
born of it — many of which have been, no doubt, of 
limited value, if not of positive spiritual detriment, to 
human society — but into nearly everything illustri- 
ous in work the same invisible force has entered, 
and from it that work has taken distinctive quality 
and worth. 

What would the history of philosophy be, except 
for the light and the loftiness which are in it by rea- 
son of such an intuitive apprehension of the soul's re- 
lation to vital systems grander than the present, and 
to One above all, who is only disclosed to the love 
which adores Him, while He writes the unfading 
records of His rule in the rush of orbs and the flash 



32 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

of star fires ? Under the plane-trees of the Academy 
— beneath the shadow of that Parthenon, which as- 
suredly no accident had builded — Plato portrayed the 
world of phenomena as having origin and subsistence 
in and by a supernal series of Divine thoughts ;* 
and from his day onward, in the field of philosophy, 
the idealists have been masters. No mechanical phi- 
losophy has had secular supremacy ; and that form of 
speculation which reduces the personal spirit in man 
to physical terms, making thought itself, volition, 
passion, the result of simple molecular action, and 
binding the race in a sterner fatalism than any theolo- 
gian ever imagined — it has spurted into sight in dif- 
ferent communities, but it nowhere has reached 
abiding power. With whatever boldness it now may 
assert the practical equivalence of physics and psy- 
chology, the identity of the mind with the encephalic 
brain-mass, it can not command human consent. 
The spiritual consciousness refuses its authoritv. It 



* " Every one will see that he [the Artificer of the world] must have 
looked to the eternal, for the world is the fairest of creations and he 
is the best of causes. And since it is of such a nature, the world has 
been framed by him with his eye fixed upon that which is appre- 
hended by reason and mind, and is unchangeable, and if this be ad- 
mitted, it must of necessity be a copy of something." 

" Until the creation of time, all things had been made in the like- 
ness of that which was their pattern ; but in so far as the universe did 
not include within itself all animals, in this respect there was still a 
want of harmony. This defect the Creator supplied by fashioning 
them after the nature of the pattern; and as the mind perceives 
ideas or species of a certain nature and number in the ideal animal, 
/ie thought that this created world ought to have them of a like nat- 
ure and number." — Timaeus, 29, 39. 



The Supernatural Relations of the Soul. 33 

knows that not out of such a philosophy has come, 
or can come, true impulse to fine spiritual endeavor, 
or any satisfaction to the soul's aspirations. Invisible 
instincts, as real and ready as impalpable atmospheres, 
pull it to the ground, an extinguished meteor, smok- 
ing and sterile. 

But that account of the soul in man which recog- 
nizes in it elements and relations that connect it in- 
dissolubly with unseen and paramount spiritual pow- 
ers, and which expects for it a more vivid life, in 
spheres beyond our present experience — centuries and 
countries become memorable by this ! Its teachers 
and champions have been the really illuminating 
minds, from whom letters and liberties, laws and arts, 
have taken inspiration. They have flung upon the 
earth a light so supreme that even they who were 
unapt for such high speculation have felt the shadows 
growing transparent upon their path. The Stoics as 
well as the Platonists — with their Semitic affinities, 
their ethical spirit, and their comparative disdain of 
physics — were thus impelled to set the soul in a kingly 
place, and to gird it about with vast relations. So, 
only, could Stoicism have survived, not as a temper, 
but as a philosophy, as giving a measure of probable 
explication to the mysterious spirit in man. 

Haunted as this is with strange reminiscences, that 
almost hint at pre-existence, alive as it is with august 
expectations, capable of moods of which no language 
can be the interpreter, feeling itself in kinship of nat- 



34 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

ure with minds which surpass it, and with ranges of 
experience not yet attained, it must at least have a 
universe for its home, such as Seneca or Antoninus 
offered, if it may not be sure — as they were not — of 
transcendent personalities, and a creative and holy 
Will, with which to stand in spiritual communion.* 
But whoever makes this final conception of its nature 
and place signal and governing to man's thought, ex- 
erts an influence over fine minds more commanding 
than that of soldier or statesman ; and the records of 
his interpreting discourse are more quickening to such 
than those of any arts or empires. Whatever takes 
the exalting influence of the spheres supernatural, 
and of our intrinsic relation to them, out of philoso- 
phy, can only strip it of its essential grace and re- 
nown. 

I need scarcely remind you what ethereal elements, 



* " A great and generous thing is the human soul. It suffers no bounds 
to be set for it save those which are common to it with God Its coun- 
try is whatever the highest universe includes in its compass It does 

not allow limitations of time. ' All years,' it says, 1 are mine ' ; no age 

is closed against great spirits, all time is pervious to thought One day 

the secrets of nature shall be disclosed to thee, the darkness shall be 
dispersed, a shining light shall smite upon thee from every side. Think 
how great the brightness shall be of so many celestial bodies, mingling 
their lustre ! No cloud shall trouble the clear serene ; each side of 
heaven shall shine with equal splendor ; day and night are but vicissi- 
tudes of the lower atmosphere." — Seneca, Ep. Mor., cii. 

" Whithersoever thou turnest thyself, thou shalt see him [God] meet- 
ing with thee ; nothing is void of him ; he himself fills all his work. 
Call him Nature, Fate, Fortune: all are names of the same God, vari- 
ously exercising his power." — Seneca, De Be?ief., Lib. iv., cap. viii. 

Compare " Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," xi. i ; ix. 28. 



Supernatural Elements in Poetry. 35 

graceful and noble, have been imparted by the same 
immense force to all best forms of human expression, 
in poetry, art, or the eloquence which has swayed 
and exalted men's minds ; or what energies have 
flowed from it into history and society, giving them, 
in fact, whatever they possess which holds to them 
permanently the admiration of mankind. 

The supernatural element in the mechanism of 
poems is certainly not needful to their highest effect. 
It may, perhaps, repulse the mind, as an over-bold 
effort to bring the supernal into such a contact with 
our palpable sphere as its august supremacy forbids. 
Yet even this is not always without its impression on 
the sensitive spirit, which meets it with indefinite 
throbs of response, as cavern-waves tremble in sym- 
pathy with far-off tides. 

The wine-colored waters breaking around the high- 
beaked ships, the camp-fires glittering on the plain, 
the splendor of armor shining in the air as with the 
flash of mountain fires, the troubled dust rising in 
mist before the tramp of rapid feet, greaves with their 
silver clasps, helmets crested with horse-hair plumes, 
the marvellous shield, with triple border, blazoned with 
manifold intricate device, and circled by the ocean- 
stream, the changeful and impetuous fight, the anguish 
and rage, and the illustrious funeral-pile — not by these, 
though moving before us in epic verse, and touched 
with iridescent lights by the magic of genius, is the 
mind held captive to the Iliad, as by its shadowy 







6 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 



morning-time spirit of ' surmise and aspiration ' ; by 
the tender and daring divine illusions, which see the 
air quick with veiled Powers, and the responding 
earth the haunted field of their Olympian struggle and 
debate.* 

The circles of Hell into which Dante entered, be- 
neath the dim and sad inscription — in which he heard 
with fainting spirit the story of Francesca, whose city 
of fire, and river of blood, and sterile plain with scorch- 
ing flakes, he pictured on immortal verse — the snow- 
white rose, of saintly multitudes, with faces of flame 
and wings of gold, which he beheld when in the up- 
turned gaze of Beatrice he had seen the day new- 
risen on the day, the Eternal Glory which he was at 
last permitted to touch with unconsumed sight, and 
of which he would leave some sparkle for coming time 
— we know how the genius of Michael Angelo, aus- 
tere and vast, was impressed by all this ; how it re- 
appears in spirit on the walls which he glorified ;f 



* " We talked of Homer. I remarked how real and direct the interpo- 
sition of the Gods seems. ' That is infinitely delicate and human,' said 
Goethe, ' and I thank heaven that the times are gone by when the French 
were permitted to call this interposition of the Gods " machine^. " But, 
really, to learn to appreciate merits so vast required some time, for it 
demanded a complete regeneration of their modes of culture.' " — Ecker- 
manris Conv. with Goethe, Feb. 24, 1 830. 

t " How deeply the study of Dante influenced his art appears not 
only in the lower part of the ' Last Judgment ' : we feel that source 
of stern and lofty inspiration in his style at large ; nor can we reckon 
what the world lost when his volume of drawings in illustration of 
the Divine Comedy perished at sea." — Symonds' " Renaissance in 
Italy" Appendix II., p. 514. 



Dante and Milton in Illustration. 37 

how other masters have shown the same impress, at 
Florence and at Pisa. It were certainly wholly too 
much to affirm that in its bold and terrible ministry 
to the sense of something outlying time, and of tran- 
scendent reality, lay nothing of that magnificent 
power over Italy and Europe which only rose in 
ascension when the stately tomb closed at Ravenna. 

And so in Milton : the floods and whirlwinds of 
tempestuous fire with which the rebellious are over- 
whelmed, the burning marie vaulted with flame, the 
battle on aerial plains, where spirits are armed in ada- 
mant and gold, while the Messiah rides sublime, on 
sapphire throne, in the crystalline sky — surely it 
hardly can be denied that something of unsurpassed 
splendor and power has streamed from thence into 
English letters. 

The very construction of the great poems which 
mark eras in history thus incorporates the conception 
of realms unseen, whose energies images only suggest, 
whose vastness is too wide to even loosely " zone the 
sun." In fanciful discovery, or mysterious adumbra- 
tion, they people the air with glooms or glories be- 
yond the measure of human thought ; and this is part 
of their hold on the world. The ^Eneid has been 
called, not unjustly, a " religious epic." 

But deeper and more intimate is the power which 
enters into the inmost life of poetry from the spir- 
itual cognizance of spheres above sense. It would be 
presumptuous for me to say this, before these honored 



$& Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

and laureled poets, if it were not their presence, with 
the lesson of their work, which prompts the saying. 
Poets sing best, according to the illustrious Greek 
master of thought and style, when carried out of them- 
selves by a Divine madness, and possessed by an influ- 
ence which then their words impart to others. * And 
this surpassing mystical afflatus comes with utmost 
power upon them when the high intimations of realms 
beyond the empyrean surprise their souls. In silence^ 
oftenest, though sometimes as with convulsing force, 
the transfiguring power falls on the spirit attuned to 
song. 

Then even nature is more clearly interpreted, in its 
deeper meanings ; because, as Joubert says, the poet 
with rays of light so purges and clarifies material 
forms, that we are permitted to see the universe as 
it exists in the thought of its author. \ 

* " For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beauti- 
ful poems, not as works of art, but because they are inspired and 

possessed They tell us that they gather their strains from 

honeyed fountains, out of the gardens and dells of the Muses ; thith- 
er, like the bees, they wing their way ; and this is true. For the poet 
is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in 
him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the 
mind is no longer in him : when he has not attained to this state, he 

is powerless and unable to utter his oracles For in this way 

the God would seem to indicate to us, and not allow us to doubt, that 
these beautiful poems are not human or of man, but divine and of 
gods ; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the gods, by 
whom they are severally possessed." — Io?i, 533-4. 

t " Or, que fait le pogte ? A l'aide de certains rayons, il purge et vide 
les formes de mati&re, et nous fait voir l'univers tel qu'il est dans la pen- 
s£e de Dieu meme. II ne prend de toutes choses que ce qui leur vient 
du ciel." — Pensees, 285. 



Interpretation of Beauty, 39 

Even the beauty which picturesque verse loves to 
celebrate depends for its tender and supreme recogni- 
tion on such spiritual insight. It is a recent notion 
of physicists that beauty is never an end in itself, in 
the outward and evident scheme of things, but exists 
only to serve utilities. The notion, I must think, has 
its root in another — that the system has originated, 
not in intelligence and beneficent purpose, but in the 
development of mechanical forces. The apprehension 
of a prescient ordaining mind, behind all phenomena, 
loving beauty for its own sake, and delighting to 
lodge it in the curl of the wood or the sheen of the 
shell, as well as in the petals and perfume of flowers, 
the crest of waves, or the prismatic round of the rain- 
bow — this is indispensable to the clear recognition, 
or the sympathetic rendering, of even the outward 
beauty of nature. Then only does this stand in es- 
sential correlation with spiritual states, which find 
images in it ; while then alone does it knit the pres- 
ent, on which it casts its scattered lights, with van- 
ished paradises, and spheres of beauty still unap* 
proached. 

There is a transcendent mood of the spirit wherein 
the meanest flower that blows awakens thoughts too 
deep for tears ; when the grass blade is oracular, and 
the common bush seems ' afire with God,' and when 
the splendors of closing day repeat the flash of jasper 
and beryl. It is when the soul is keenly conscious of 
relations to systems surpassing sense, and to a crea- 



40 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

tive personal Spirit by whom all things are interfused. 
Aside from that, the yellow primrose is nothing 
more ; and the glory of the sunset — seen from Sor- 
rento, or seen from Cambridge — fails from the hues 
of lucid gold or glowing ruby, because there fall no 
more suggestions, from all their splendors, of realms 
beyond the fading vision. 

But if this be true of outward nature, how much 
more clearly of the spirit of man ! Then only can 
this be manifested to us in the mystery of verse, with 
any just interpretation of what is profound and typi- 
cal in it, when it is recognized as personal, moral, of 
Divine origin and Divine affiliations, with unsounded 
futures waiting for it ; when, in other words, it is set 
in relation with immense and surpassing realms of life. 
I may not properly illustrate from the living, but 
one example irresistibly suggests itself. Hawthorne's 
genius did not utter itself in rhyme, but how solitary, 
high-musing, it moves in this atmosphere of the es- 
sential mystery of life, as in the tenebrous splendor 
of sombre clouds, all whose edges burn with gold ! 

Without something of this, poetry always is com- 
monplace. Outward action may be vividly pictured. 
Tragical events may find fit memorial. The manifold 
pageants, popular or imperial, may march before us, 
through many cantos, as on a broad and brilliant 
stage. But these, alone, are as the paltry plumes of 
fire-weed, taking the place of the burned forest, 
whose every tree-stem was "the mast of some great 



The Supernatural Element in Art. 41 

ammiral." The grand and imperative intuitions of 
the soul, which affirm the ideal, and are prophetic of 
things above nature — the " thoughts that wander 
through eternity," the love, prayer, passion, hope, 
which have no ultimate consummation on earth, and 
which in themselves predict immortality — these, 
which must furnish the substance of poetry, are only 
represented, in the most ductile and musical verse, 
upon the basis of the spiritual philosophy. Poets 
differ, as do the colors which astronomy shows in the 
radiant suns — blue, purple, gold — bound in the firm 
alliances of the heavens. But a sun black in sub- 
stance, and shooting bolts of darkness from it, were 
as easily conceivable as a Comtist Shakespeare or an 
agnostic Wordsworth. 

To all forms of art, in its higher departments, the 
same majestic super-sensible influence is as obviously 
vital. Music — we can not even imagine it, in sym- 
phonies and sonatas as those of Beethoven, in masses 
as of Haydn or Mozart, in fugue, oratorio, or the 
solemn Gregorian chant, except as it voices feeling 
and thought which are not fettered to the level of the 
earth ; except as it catches a secret inspiration from 
hopes, visions, supreme aspirations, which are free of 
the universe, and which overtop Time. This sub- 
tlest tone-speech, which, with its infinite wail or tri- 
umph, gives voice as language never could to what is 
precious and passionate in us — this, if nothing else, 
declares man's relation, in the ultimate reach and rev- 



42 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

elry of his spirit, to something beyond the search of 
sense. No form of Religion has been more depend- 
ent than is this august and delicate art on sugges- 
tions whose echo, except for it, no ear might hear. 
The triumph of Resurrection, the awful chords of 
the Dies Irse, are themes for its mysterious ministry. 
Dr. Channing well said that it is " inexplicable " ; and 
that " the Christian world, under its power, has often 
attained to a singular consciousness of Immortality." 
Heard in the twilight, how often, with us, has it car- 
ried the spirit above shadow and show into immeas- 
urable brightness and calm ! 

So in painting. We know what glory fell on the 
canvas when the supernal story of the Gospels 
streamed, with lights that seemed to come from 
above the earth, on the minds which moved the 
early pencils. From the Convent of Assisi, and from 
the inspiring legend of St. Francis, went the strong 
impulse of the Umbrian school. It is the middle- 
age spirit, feeling itself proximate to the gates of 
either heaven or hell, which breaks into expression in 
Cimabue or Giotto, or in the figures of Fra Angel- 
ico — " embodied ecstasies," as they have been called, 
"upon a background of illuminated gold." The 
great collections find always among the works so in- 
spired their master-pieces. It is not the portrait of 
Pontiff or Emperor, or of any lovely matron or maid, 
it is not the vivid and elaborate picture of scenes of 
human coronation or debate, but it is the lucid and 



The Transcendent in Painting and Sculpture. 43 

tranquil splendor that lies still on the Transfiguration, 
it is the solemn majesty of the Supper, or the vast and 
unsearchable tragedy of the Cross, thick with mysteri- 
ous glooms — to which the observer always hastens, 
and the memory of which interprets art ,to him, as 
lifting the spirit toward realms transcendent. The 
Holy Night of Correggio illuminates the gallery. 
The Magdalen, or the Master, the shining wave of 
seraphic wings, or the gleam of the trumpet of final 
summons, are in the atmosphere of pinacothek or pal- 
ace where Italy and Germany assemble their treas- 
ures. Cherubic faces glow on the canvas where 
Raphael enthrones the Virgin Mother. The earthly 
spirit of Rubens himself loses its grossness, his pen- 
cil becomes exalting and tender, in saintly sadness, 
when he confronts the Descent from the Cross. 

So marbles rise to immortal renown, not in the 
busts of Aristides or Antoninus, of Cato or Trajan, or 
of the builder of Roman empire, but in the forms 
which perpetuate among men the early visions of su- 
pernatural grace and majesty, in the virginal Diana or 
the Apollo. The stone itself seems almost quickened 
into poetry or music, when angelic figures, apostolic 
raptures, the majesty of the lawgiver taught of God, 
break palpitating through it. And when Thorwald- 
sen has moulded it at last into the perfect image of 
the Christ, as his mind discerns that, he feels at once 
that his genius is failing. His satisfaction is his sen- 
tence ; since his conception of that to which nature 



44 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

is only the vassal no more transcends his imitative 
touch. 

So in lordliest buildings — it is always their connec- 
tion with what is unseen which gives the final majesty 
and rhythm. It is not the palace, with splendid fa- 
cade, and internal wealths of mosaic and marquetry — 
it is not the fortress, the theatre, or the bourse, which 
best expresses or animates the genius whose subduing 
thought sets in motion the quarry. One must build 
to the praise of a . Being above, to build the noblest 
memorial of himself. The thought of the something 
unsearchable and immense, toward which all human 
life is tending — the thought of domains of mysterious 
height, and unhorizoned expanse, with which the ex- 
pectant soul in man has already relations — this must 
exalt and sanctify the spirit, that it may pile the stub- 
born rock into superb and lovely proportions. And 
with it must come a sense of intervention from such 
higher realms, to lift the environed human spirit to- 
ward that which transcends it, and to open the paths 
to immortal possession. Then, Brunelleschi may set 
his dome on unfaltering piers. Then, Angelo may 
verily ' hang the Pantheon in the air/ Then the un- 
known builder, whose personality disappears in his 
work, may stand an almost inspired mediator between 
the upward-looking thought and the spheres over- 
head. Each line then leaps with a swift aspiration, 
as the vast structure rises, in nave and transept, into 
pointed arch and vanishing spire. The groined roof 



The Supernatural Element in Life. 45 

grows dusky with majestic glooms ; while, beneath, 
the windows flame, as with apocalyptic light of jew- 
els. Angelic presences, sculptured upon the portal, 
invite the wayfarer, and wave before him their wings 
of promise. Within is a worship which incense only 
clouds, which spoken sermons only mar. The build- 
ing itself becomes a worship, a Gloria in Excelsis, ar- 
ticulate in stone ; the noblest tribute offered on earth,by 
any art, to Him from whom its impulse came, and with 
the ineffable majesty of whose spirit all skies are filled ! 
Not art, alone, feels this vast impulse which falls 
in its quickening splendor from above. It enters into 
human life ; gives conquering courage to human so- 
ciety ; develops what is noblest of power in the race, 
and becomes the spring of its grandest endeavors. 
With illustrations of the energy which has been 
poured from it, into the action of persons and of peo- 
ples, history is vivid. How it looms before us in 
the vast panorama of the Crusades — setting nations 
in movement, shattering feudalism, opening the way 
for International Law, augmenting men's knowledge 
and giving positive expansion to their minds, bring- 
ing Europe and Asia face to face, and pushing men 
forth on those restless quests which at last picked up 
this continent from the seas ! Plainly, such move- 
ments were possible, only, as fealty to beings and to 
interests of a paramount authority appeared to de- 
mand them. Their banners could do nothing else 
than bear the emblem of a world supernatural. 



46 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

We need not go back to times mediaeval. It was 
the same incalculable force which burst into almost 
equal exhibition in the terrible struggle of the Neth- 
erland burghers against the power and rage of Spain 
— which one of your recent illustrious members has 
celebrated in a prose rich and melodious as an epic. 
That fierce and almost unending fight on sea and 
land, the desperate self-devotion which cut the dykes, 
and would give the drowned plains to the sea rather 
than yield them to the invader, the absolutely uncon- 
querable will which defeat could not daunt nor de- 
lays weary, nor the death of the leader fatally break, 
the final recklessness of all pain and all assault, which 
bore starvation and did not flinch, and which never 
would yield while a hand remained to light a match, 
or an arm was left to lift a lance — all which makes 
the story sublime, and in fame immortal, came from 
a faith in things unseen. It was in the measureless 
energy of that, that the weak at last conquered the 
strong, and impassioned peasants, citizens, women, 
expelled from their coasts the richest and most inso- 
lent power of the world. Hardly another scene in 
history is more significant or impressive than that of 
the starving people,when the siege of Leyden had been 
suddenly raised, staggering to the church to offer 
their faint but praising worship, before their lips had 
tasted bread.* 



* " Magistrates and citizens, wild Zealanders, emaciated burgher 
guards, sailors, soldiers, women, children — nearly every living person 



hi French and English History. 47 

The same force was shown in the Huguenots as 
well — whose distinguished descendants have had high 
honor in our history ; and the same, as clearly, by the 
Puritans of England. The invincible Ironsides who 
bore without shrinking the shattering shock of Ru- 
pert's charge, were plain house-fathers, susceptible as 
others to fear or pain, and with no rare supremacy of 
nature. But they thought, at least, that they knew 
One in whom they had believed ; that He was a King 
who in righteousness did make war ; and that for His 
faithful, amid the circles of sublimer existence, crowns 
were reserved. No angels hovered, "clad in white 
samite," upon their dim and murky skies. No celes- 
tial panoplies were ranged in front of their grim lines. 
But ' the good old Cause' for which they stood, to their 
apprehension, was related not only to liberties below, 
but to welfares immortal overhead. They strove for 
interests so supreme that all the spheres had a stake 
in the struggle ; and, in the unsubduable strength 
which thence possessed them, they conquered great 



within the walls — all repaired without delay to the great church, stout 
Admiral Boisot leading the way. The starving and heroic city, which 
had been so firm in its resistance to an earthly king, now bent itself in 
humble gratitude before the King of kings. After prayers, the whole 
vast congregation joined in the thanksgiving hymn. Thousands of 
voices raised the song, but few were able to carry it to its conclusion ; 
for the universal emotion, deepened by the music, became too full for 
utterance. The hymn was abruptly suspended, while the multitude wept 
like children. This scene of honest pathos terminated, the necessary 
measures for distributing food and for relieving the sick were taken 
by the magistracy." — The Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. II., pp. 
576-7. 



48 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

captains, flung their challenge to the haughtiest pow- 
ers, and set the foot on the neck of their king. 

Wherever conscientious and consecrated men have 
been ranged in stern battle for the liberty and the 
law which to them were divine, the same energy has 
appeared. The intimate sense of personal freedom is 
based most securely on the radical sense of human re- 
lationship to perennial systems of power and life. 
Democracy there has its surest foundation ; the dif- 
ferences of social position and training becoming im- 
perceptible beneath the height of this relation, as the 
different heights of house-roofs disappear, when meas- 
ured against Canopus or Orion. 

In our own protracted Revolutionary struggle, 
there was not wanting this impulse from on high, 
though it was scarcely as signal, perhaps, as it else- 
where has been. But religious conviction, as well as 
political instinct or theory, had its part in the contest. 
Sermons and prayers were as really engaged, on be- 
half of Independence, as were muskets and how- 
itzers. To many of the nobler leaders of thought it 
seemed apparent that the scattered populations who 
had been so singularly brought here and trained, in 
seeking their final separation from Great Britain 
were moving on the lines of a strategy above man's, 
and had forces of Providence for their mighty pio- 
neers. The feeling grew stronger as the struggle 
went on. It was scarcely, I think, so vivid and im- 
pressive with those who almost without expectation 



Illustrated in American History. 49 

fought and fell on yonder hill, that bright June day, 
as it came to be afterward — with those who carried 
their banners unbent after the frightful Long Island 
disaster, with those who sternly outwatched the win- 
ter at Valley Forge, with those who yet waged the 
wasting battle, until at Yorktown they saw its end. 
They were mechanics, laborers, farmers, who had 
seemed to have no chance whatever against disci- 
plined troops. But aids unexpected had come to 
them from afar. On the edge of defeat they had 
more than once snatched surprising victory. And 
while, no doubt, a hundred motives intermingled to 
keep them faithful, there grew an impression, of 
which they partook, that the Divine plan was some- 
how connected with their success, and that the devel- 
oped independence of the country had relation to 
schemes, moral and Christian, in which the future 
should exult. One hears the diapason of such a su- 
preme conception of things rolling beneath the crash 
of guns and the flurries of debate. It is that concep- 
tion, in thoughtful minds, which ever since has lifted 
that struggle to the higher levels of historical signifi- 
cance. 

Assuredly such a sense of relation to ideal inter- 
ests, and to welfares more permanent than any of 
Time, was essentially involved in our late Civil War. 
It was out of no atheistic philosophy, it was under no 
over-shadowing impression of the sole reality of that 
which is physical, that the vast enthusiasms of that su- 



5<3 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

preme time sprang up and bloomed. The young 
glad life which went down in blood on ghastly fields, 
— of which you have here so many memorials ! — it was 
offered at the summons of interests so illustrious that 
all the suns are only their fleeting physical basis. It 
recognized man, on behalf of whom it was given, as 
related to worlds beyond the sweep of human sense, 
and as so having indefeasible rights of culture and of 
worship. An ethical system found its voice in the 
long cannonade — sovereign in the earth, because sov- 
ereign for all spheres. The supremacy of the spirit 
which rose over dangers, dungeons, deaths, had its 
source in the sense of a spiritual universe, in which 
all grand and lovely souls are powers and peers. The 
sacrifice was too great, the following anguish too over- 
whelming, if such a universe does not exist. Only 
from it, and from our essential relationship to it, 
could have come the paramount moral impulse, suffi- 
cient at once to inspire the daring and heal the grief. 
Nor is it in such vast contests alone that the im- 
pulse has been shown of this recognition of vital 
realms surpassing the bounds of space and time. In 
the moral impression made on the world by teachers 
like Edwards, or like Channing — frail, but majestic 
in spiritual force — it has been manifest, as clearly as 
aforetime in Bernard or Anselm. Universities have 
sprung from it, and in it have found their vitalizing 
force. They were founded, no doubt, in a credulous 
time, when many things seemed real and sure which 



Sense of the Supernatural, in Universities, 51 

to us are grotesque. None the less, however, were they 
founded, in the old world and here, upon the con- 
viction of vast and unseen vital domains, to which 
man is related ; upon the sense of divine dignities 
thus investing the soul ; upon the impression that 
Time is great, only as bearing in its scant round the 
quickening seeds of further destiny, that the earth is 
great only as associated with more sublime realms, 
and that wealth and wisdom both are regal when they 
serve the welfare of that on-looking and inestimable 
spirit beside which the stars are painted dust. 

It was natural that under impressions like these the 
humble school of William of Champeaux should grow 
to the great University of Paris ; that out of obscure 
conventual institutes should rise the many affiliated 
colleges of Cambridge and Oxford. It was natural 
that in the utmost poverty of the early New England 
this great and distinguished University should be 
founded — for Christ and the Church, or for the 
Truth. As long as such convictions continue, con- 
necting man by the frame of his being with the vast 
and enduring over-world, discerning in the mystery of 
his life divine energies and immortal predictions, the 
institutions which were born of them will remain, 
expanding still to larger proportions, and chronicling 
the centuries with their concentric rings of growth. 
But if the time should ever come when materialistic 
or monistic theories shall supersede the ancient 
thought — finding in mind only a result of mechan 



52 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

ical force inducing a certain stream of feelings, dis- 
crediting existence amid the immensities, and either 
denying a personal Spirit who frames the creation, or 
relegating the thought of Him to the regions of an 
uncertain hypothesis — Universities may continue, 
and possibly for a time may be physically enlarged, 
but the glory will have vanished from library and lab- 
oratory, as well as from chapel. There may be still 

those obstinate questionings 

Of sense, and outward things ; 

but the serene and large contemplation, the profound 
introspection, the deep delight in art, philosophy, he- 
roism, song, the far-exulting sweep of the spirit in its 
vital expectation, over eons and spheres yet unre- 
vealed — these will depart. The earthly figure alone 
will continue, without aegis or aureole ; and the short- 
lived animal, whose spirit is to turn to dust with his 
brain, will hardly look without amazement upon the 
service and sacrifice of the Fathers. 

So it is, by an unchangeable law, that the Christian 
Religion, through the frankness, breadth, simplicity, 
grandeur, with which it affirms the Supernatural, 
and makes that apparent to the mind of the world, 
becomes the chief patron of such Universities, and 
pours from its unwasting force a supreme inspiration 
on every endeavor for mental and for spiritual cult- 
ure. Men may criticise its records, and variously in- 
terpret some of its doctrines ; but wherever it goes, 



The Present Duty of Educated Men. 53 

there breathes an influence into the total air of soci- 
ety out of unsounded depths of age and space, and 
from spheres bright with illuminated souls ; and the 
tree will bourgeon in sunless wastes, sooner than any 
great school of learning will bloom in abundant per- 
ennial vigor without the light of Bethlehem upon it. 

Gentlemen, of the Phi Beta Kappa Society : 

In the measure of whatever power we have, it 
surely belongs to us to endeavor, if only as consider- 
ate of true secular welfare, that this recognition, pro- 
found and prophetic, of the greatness of the personal 
spirit in man, and of its relation to sublime realms of 
universal life, shall not pass away from our eager and 
commanding American society. Here is the sudden 
assembling of the nations, attracted by opportunity, 
compacted in liberty. Here is the wealth, of fur- 
rowed field and forest height, of river-beds gleaming, 
and hills crowded, with waiting metals. The land re- 
verberates with the roll of swift wheels, and waters 
echo the throb of the engine, while mechanisms 
spring from the virile and fruitful life of the people, 
almost as roses from out the juicy shoots of June. 
But everything in the future of whatever is best here 
depends on the maintenance of this sense of relation- 
ship, in our immediate incipient life, to domains of 
experience of which no telescope gives us a hint, but 
which send out to meet us august premonitions. 
Art, poetry, a noble philosophy, as really as theol- 



54 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

ogy, have here their condition ; even generous liber- 
ties, copious and continuing public charities, what- 
ever is truly distinguished in government, whatever 
is morally great in history. 

We stand surrounded by no such monuments of 
an eminent Past as are centres of fine incitement 
abroad. All the more is it needful, on this unshel- 
tered continent, that we recognize the enduring sys- 
tems of life, older than suns, above cities and states 
and stellar spaces, and feel, as Pascal said, that "then 
only is man great and incomparable, when considered 
according to his end."* The searching of nature 
goes on all the time, with accelerating speed, and the 
noblest success. All the more, I judge, should it be 
ours, in whatever profession, of whatever communi- 
ties or special opinions, to see that man is not "lost," 
as one has said, "in the bosom of the immensity 
and splendor of nature " ; to maintain the preemi- 
nence of the sovereign personal spirit in him over all 
nerve-tissues, with all cerebral convolutions ; to main- 
tain the accordant supremacy in the Universe of the 
spiritual order over the physical, the immutable sub- 
limity, the superlative splendor, of realms of exist- 
ence to which the prophesying spirit points, as having 
with them already, in its mysterious and prophetical 
life, embryonic connection. 

If that impression does not remain on this intrepid 



* "Thoughts of Pascal," chap, ii., sec. 14. 



Life embraced in an Infinite Scheme, 55 

and powerful people, into whose veins all nations 
pour their mingling blood, it will be our immense 
calamity. Public action, without it, will lose the 
dignity of consecration. Eloquence, without it, will 
miss what is loftiest, will give place to a careless and 
pulseless disquisition, or fall to the flatness of politi- 
cal slang. Life, without it, will lose its sacred and 
mystic charm. Society, without it, will fail of inspira- 
tions, and be drowned in an animalism whose rising 
tides will keep pace with its wealth. 

It is the delightful assurance of Science that the 
tear and the star are equally embraced in an infinite 
scheme — " the glow-worm, and the fire-sea of the sun " 
— and that one law regulates the phyllotactic arrange- 
ment of leaves upon stems and the vast revolutions 
of the planets in the heavens. In like manner it is 
our prerogative to feel that the humblest life, which 
has intellect and will in it, is associated intimately 
with unreached cycles, surpassing thought, to which 
it has organic relation. On the full assurance of this 
fundamental scheme of the Universe has rested hith- 
erto the philosopher's enthusiasm, the martyr's self- 
sacrifice, the hero's endurance. On this affirmative 
and solid impression has securely been builded what- 
ever has been grandest and most charming in the Past. 
Only that which shall make the same conviction as 
wide and controlling in the centuries to come can 
give to them true power and beauty, esthetic grace, 
intellectual vision, moral wisdom. 



56 Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

It is for us, then, personally to live in the clear ap- 
prehension of that unmeasured over-world, the shadow 
of whose glory fell not on Hebrew hills alone, but 
on Grecian, Persian, Indian heights, some echoes of 
whose magisterial harmonies have been heard in all 
superior spirits, and the touch of whose far-shining 
prediction on any pure mind makes hope elate and 
purpose high. We do not doubt this, I am sure. 
But high contemplation, with a deep and delicate 
moral experience, alone can give us that certainty of it 
which the great souls have had. Retreating inward, 
we shall ascend upward, till the vital realms surpass- 
ing Nature become luminous to our thought ; and 
then — as jewels have sometimes been fancied to be- 
come impenetrated in their sensitive substance with 
the splendor of sunshine, till they emitted a subse- 
quent lustre through darkening shades — our spirits, 
steeped in this supreme vision, shall brighten others 
with irradiating glow. 

Nothing nobler than this can be proposed to any 
man. It is the supremest human office, in whatever re- 
lations, and whatever position, rising above the invest- 
ing physical forces and laws, discerning the intensity 
and the boundlessness of life with which the spirit in 
man is allied, to make these also inspiring to others : 
that thus through us may be transfused a glory from 
them into the minds which we affect ; that we may 
cast from our brief years something of this transfigur- 
ing light upon the life of coming times ; that we may 



The true Homage to God. 57 

honor as we ought that visioned and masterful spirit 
within, whose thought and love bear in themselves im- 
mortal presage ; that we may honor Him above, in 
whose unseen infolding life the Universe rests, 

" And make our branches lift a golden fruit, 
Into the bloom of Heaven." 









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